Len Brown comes up with daft ideas…when he isn’t forcing CCOs to rebrand at the cost of millions, or wanting to put in a rail loop at the cost of billions he is sitting in a chair like the proverbial village idiot.

If he wanted to make Auckland truly the world’s most liveable city then perhaps he could consider something like what is happening in New York City:

Payphones in New York City have largely been made obsolete by the fact that almost everybodyâ€™s got a cellphone for staying in touch on-the-go. Luckily for the long-forgotten phones that still dot the cityâ€™s streets, theyâ€™re about to get a twenty-first-century upgrade.

New York Cityâ€™s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications introduced on Wednesday the cityâ€™s first payphones-turned-Wi-Fi hotspots. Theyâ€™re free of charge for any nearby New Yorker (or visitor) to use for connecting his smartphone, tablet or laptop to the Internet. Internet services are being provided in cooperation with Van Wagner and Titan.

So far, 10 payphones spread across Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn have become Wi-Fi-equipped as part of a pilot program.